


If we grow into a tree

by hoesthetic



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Non-Graphic Smut, Religious Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:55:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23858692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoesthetic/pseuds/hoesthetic
Summary: To ask questions is to doubt and to doubt is to stray.His mother says Jaemin is trouble. Jeno just thinks he is a forest fire.
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Comments: 33
Kudos: 150





	If we grow into a tree

**Author's Note:**

> cw vague suicidal ideation but seriously, very vague. discussions surrounding life and death, existentialism, god, anthropocentrism.
> 
> the title from jesus christ 2005 god bless america by the 1975

Jeno stares at the colourful boxes and they stare right back at him, their bold letters insinuating too many options, too many flavours and sizes. It should be an easy decision, just pick one, his mother always says, but what if he goes with Rice Krispies just to crave Corn Flakes later? Grabs a box and at the check-out regrets it already.

It’s silly, he knows. He bites on his tongue and takes a few steps to the left, scanning over the packaging half-heartedly. 

“I’d go with Cini Minis,” a voice startles him. Jeno turns his head to see an unfamiliar face looking at the cereal boxes with a thoughtful look. 

“Huh?” Jeno says dumbly. 

“If you can’t decide, go with Cini Minis,” he says. 

He turns to look at the shelf, specifically the box the guy recommended.

“I’ve never eaten them,” Jeno admits. 

“What? Then you definitely have to get them!” He says, smiling almost excitedly. People who approach others so easily, comfortably, intimidate him a little. The boy—not a man yet—seems to be around his own age but Jeno hasn’t seen him before. He would’ve remember if that had happened, not just because their town is claustrophobically small, but also because he has bleached hair with a blue streak in his fringe. It’s unusual, to say at least. 

“Okay,” he says softly and returns the smile, “I trust your judgement, then.” 

Jeno reaches for the box and grabs it. He’s about to ask his name and whether he’s new here, or maybe just visiting a friend, family, just a stop on a road trip, but he spots his mother approaching him with the shopping trolley. 

“Did you pick?” She asks, her tone of voice stern as always. 

“Yes,” Jeno says and glances at the guy, still standing there, and mouths a bye. He chuckles and does the same in return, giving him no excuse to stay so Jeno rushes to his mother and places the cereal in the trolley. 

“Who was that?” She asks when they exit the aisle and the guy shouldn’t be in a hearing distance anymore. Jeno shrugs his shoulders and shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans. 

“I don’t know,” he tells her.

“Strange hair,” she says, and he just nods, knowing better than to talk back. 

Strange hair, the words echo in his mind but they don’t mean anything more than that. Strange hair, he mouths to himself when his mother’s face is turned towards the cartons of milk and she can’t see the movements of his lips. 

There’s nothing more to that.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jeno closes his eyes and leans back on the couch. 

The icons and crosses on the walls disappear, the coffee table and its doily fade away and for a moment he can breath easily. It’s easy to imagine like that, to be laying on a meadow of little flowers and an endless night sky. To feel infinite and timeless, his tiny existence stretching for miles and miles more.

The burdening disappointment of opening his eyes to meet the same old living room that feels like a cage. 

“I asked around,” his mother walks into the room, in her hands a towel drying them. The dishes now clean, probably, set away in cabinets and hiding behind the doors of them. 

“About?” Jeno asks and sits up straighter, just to please her a second more. 

“The boy in the store. His family just moved here. He isn’t good news, I would prefer if you didn’t associate with him,” she says, her eyes dark but they always are. Dark like his. People tell him he has his mother’s eyes and what to make out of that, he doesn’t know. 

“Why?” He asks, even though it’s pushing buttons that aren’t to be touched. To ask questions is to doubt and to doubt is to stray. 

“The why isn’t important,” she says like it’s the end of the conversation. Jeno wants to argue—it is important, that is the most crucial part—but instead he swallows it down and nods. The repressed roll of his eyes, what a cliché of a scenery, anyway. 

Jeno swallows it down, too. He always does. Holding himself back and doesn’t tip over the edge. It’s been working, so far, his words a heavy weight in the bottom of his stomach, keeping him grounded, working in unison with gravity. 

“Alright,” he says, “I won’t.”

She gives him a smile but it doesn’t reach her eyes. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The Sunday mass breaks his heart every time. To sit amidst everyone else in their Sunday bests, the Holy Bible in his lap, spread open—like legs, no, don’t go there, not now—and have the sunlight fall in through the tall windows to make it all feel holy. 

To sit on the wooden bench and wonder, what else is there? Jeno presses his fingernails into his palms. The way they dig into his flesh doesn’t tell him anything. His mother beside him, focused on the preaching, and Jeno’s somewhere else entirely, in his mind, that is. 

A pastor’s son. God’s son. His mother’s son. 

He’s eighteen but he will never stop being someone’s son. The thought offers him no comfort. It used to but he isn’t a boy anymore. Or is he? He’s not a man, surely. Something in between, maybe, treading the line between adulthood and adolescence, always, with no confidence to where he should tip. 

The words of his father boom loud in the church. It’s impossible to shut them out. They penetrate his skin and pierce through his heart. _With faith anything is possible._ It’s not. _Only if you tried._ I can’t, mom, dad, I can’t, I’ve tried, but I can’t take it much longer. _Have you, really?_ No.

He answers the hypotheticals in his mind and refuses to close his eyes. He wants to but there are stronger things than just want. 

When the congregation echoes the _amen_ Jeno wants to burst through the windows and crash-land on the grass. The unbearable sensation of needing to crawl out of his skin and leave everything but his soul behind, laying on the summer ground peacefully, eternally. These are the thoughts he shouldn’t be having, the things he shouldn’t ache for. Jeno hasn’t had control over his mind for a long time. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The summer days are long and Jeno doesn’t want to be anywhere. There’s nothing to do. The things he could do he doesn’t want to. He sleeps and wakes up and is good, he is proper, has his clothes ironed and smiles to strangers. 

His mother had ushered him out of the house, anyway. So he had grabbed his bike and headed to somewhere, anywhere, no direction whatsoever.

A head of peroxide blonde hair and a blue streak. He is sitting on a bus stop, reading a book. Jeno acts on an impulse, doesn’t think it through, and stops in front of him.

“Buses don’t stop here anymore,” he says. The guy lifts his eyes from the book and his expression morphs into something more delighted.

“I know,” he says. “Did you like the cereal?”

“Yeah, didn’t let me down. But why are you sitting here, then?”

“The shade,” he says and nods upwards. 

_What’s your name? Why did my mom say you’re bad news? Is there something special about you or is it just the hair?_

“I see,” Jeno nods slowly. He puts his book down next to him and looks at him curiously. 

“I never got your name,” he says. 

“It’s Jeno.”

There’s a certain thrill in it. It’s as equally embarrassing, too. Jeno doesn’t misbehave. He doesn’t and things go smoothly, but there’s something like a spark in doing something his mother told him against. 

“I’m Jaemin,” he says. 

“Jaemin,” Jeno repeats. _Jaemin._ It’s just a name. 

“Just moved here,” Jaemin tells him and he nods like he doesn’t know this already, “now, tell me, what the fuck is here to do?”

Jeno snorts.

“Nothing,” he says, “really, nothing. Hanging out in grocery stores?”

“How exciting. A glamorous small town life.”

“Tell me about it,” Jeno says, “I’ve lived here my whole life.”

“Really?” Jaemin asks. 

“Yeah.”

“Geez, impressive,” he mumbles.

It’s easy to connect the dots. Jaemin, a city boy, already sick of the slow pace of the tiny town consisting mostly of old people. Jeno, just someone who looks his age met in the cereal section of a store, some potential company. 

It’s not important. 

He’s still straddling his bike, standing there a little awkwardly. 

“Wanna show me around?” Jaemin asks. 

Jeno hesitates, his mom’s words in his mind.

“Might as well,” he says after a moment. 

Jaemin’s face lights up, his smile showing teeth and all. There’s something really genuine in it, the way his eyes squint up and the white pearls of his teeth almost shine. 

“Can I hop on?” He asks, bold and straightforward—unashamed. Everything Jeno isn’t. It feels like he’s going to stumble over his words so instead he just nods. It’s not like him to agree to things like this.

Jaemin shoves his book to a tote bag he kept on the ground, slinging it over his shoulder and then gets up.

He can’t remember the last time he rode a bike with someone behind him like this. Maybe when he was a child, more carefree despite always having been shy and timid. The narrow country road seems to stretch for days but Jeno knows that isn’t the case. 

There aren’t many things to show. A little creek closeby and an abandoned house. He doesn’t have the inner strength to show him around the town like this. People talk. His mother will hear. He’d like to say he didn’t care but because he is Jeno—he cares and cares and cares. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jaemin has a red pickup truck. 

That’s not very city-esque of him. Jeno is no one to draw judgements or even conclusions. 

He looks at him and attempts to count his lashes like stars. It doesn’t work. His parents think he went on a run. Jeno doesn’t like running but they wouldn’t know that. He looks at Jaemin like he’s trying to pinpoint a country on a map. He looks at him in a way that makes his chest tighten—this isn’t what he should be doing. 

So Jaemin has a red pickup truck. 

“I’m a shit driver,” Jeno says, focusing his gaze on Jaemin’s hands on the steering wheel. They grip it with such force he’s momentarily afraid it might break. It, of course, doesn’t make any sense. 

“Good that I’m great, then,” Jaemin says and gives him a grin. 

Jeno thinks about how he should be back in a half an hour but when he looks out of the window, the summer’s night sky is bruising and vast. A shiver runs through his spine like it’s trying to escape his skin. It feels like—

He doesn’t know what to compare it to. 

Jaemin parks the car next to a golden meadow and Jeno wants to run into it and roll around like a child. He steps out and stretches his arms up, Jaemin circling the car to stand beside him. He reaches out and takes a hold of the cross necklace, studying it in his palm. Jeno holds his breath and looks away.

“Nice necklace,” Jaemin comments, pulling his hand away and proceeding to put a cigarette between his lips and lighting it. Jeno steps back almost instinctively—he can’t go back home smelling like smoke. 

“Thanks,” he says instead of bringing up the fact that it’s not just there to look nice. 

It’s almost mesmerizing, Jaemin’s silhouette against the field behind him, smoke evaporating into the air, making him appear almost painting-like. The sun going to sleep, desperately trying to cast its last colours on the sky. Jeno, too, feels like falling asleep, as it could be the only way to get it to make sense.

”Why did you even move here?” Jeno asks, feeling brave for it but it washes out as quickly as it came when Jaemin smiles crookedly and shoots him an unimpressed look.

”I assumed you would know. Small town talk and all.”

”I don’t,” Jeno says, leaving out how the reason is his parents still not trusting him with information other than the weather and gospel. He can’t ask people things—they always circle back to them. Caged in, he feels. To say this aloud is to admit to being a circus animal.

The difference, of course, being that Jeno was never _meant_ to be free. He wasn’t created to roam forests or swim across oceans. He’s not like the fish in the fishsticks. 

Jaemin looks taken aback, his expression morphing into one of interest, taking a drag. Jeno has this overwhelming itch of not knowing what to do with his body. And if this truly was one of his dreams, he could just morph into a bird before even realizing it, escape from between the cracks of reality. But for this is nothing but an ordinary evening, he just stands there.

“Huh,” Jaemin says dumbly, “well, people make it out to be worse than it is. I did get expelled. You might be wondering, but Jaemin, my new friend, my buddy, it’s the middle of summer, why come now? To answer that, even simpler. There was no point in enrolling me in a new school mid-spring. I just worked at a store. Any questions?”

He speaks like he’s telling a story—a made up one, completely fictitious, with complex characters and plot points and turns. Like he doesn’t believe in it, either, and that it doesn’t matter. He sits down on the ground, knees up, face tilted towards him. 

“Why?” Jeno asks.

“Why what?”

“Did you get expelled.”

Jaemin laughs. Jeno wishes he could pinpoint the feeling in his chest it causes. It’s chaos-like.

“This and that,” he says vaguely, “the last straw was getting into a fight. I’m not a violent person. Self defense.”

“I see,” he mumbles and looks down to the ground. His red sneakers are muddy and worn out. _I should go,_ he says inside his head but doesn’t dare to open his mouth. He doesn’t want to, either, and that’s the worst part. 

Jaemin just grins, putting out the cigarette. Jeno gathers up his courage and sits down, back against the wheel of the truck.

“I’d like to swim,” he says suddenly, “are there any lakes around?”

Jeno hesitates, fingers pressing against the little stones on the ground. 

“Yeah. There’s a few.”

“Wanna go?”

“I can’t,” he says and it almost feels like cursing.

“Some other day?” Jaemin asks, not seeming disappointed at all. 

“Okay,” Jeno mutters, “that’d be nice.”

He doesn’t know what he’s doing. People don’t usually want to befriend him. He’s nice, polite, a good kid—that’s what the teachers call him. Timid, a little shy, hard-working. He isn’t funny or interesting, and those are the things that matter to other teenagers. And what he would give to be like Jaemin, who immediately comes off as strong, remarkable. It’s this sense of knowing that no matter what, to forget him is to forget everything. What makes it weird is that the feeling persists even with the knowledge that Jeno doesn’t even know him. 

“That’s a promise, then,” Jaemin says, running his hand through his hair and exposing his forehead. Jeno thinks of the cross close to his heart and lets his mind shy away. 

“It is,” he smiles, then. It probably doesn’t reach his eyes, mimicking his mother, but it is a smile nevertheless and Jaemin seems delighted by it. 

“Want me to take you home?” He asks, as if he knows. 

Maybe he does know. Maybe he’s some sort of an angel. It’s silly but Jeno knows by know that there are things he shouldn’t question. 

“My parents are gonna worry,” he explains. 

“They don’t know you’re with me,” Jaemin says. It’s not a question. 

“Sorry.”

“I get it.”

There’s no _it’s okay_ or _don’t worry about it._ Does Jaemin know how he affects the people around him? Or maybe it’s just Jeno and his foolish heart. 

He knows he should look away when Jaemin gets up, his body moving easily like it’s made of water, hands reaching up towards the sky to stretch, a strip of his midriff exposed, the dark hairs of his happy trail curly, light denim shorts pale against his skin—Jeno knows he shouldn’t watch but he can’t tear his eyes away.

Jaemin catches him looking. 

A flash of panic seeps into his blood but it quiets down when he just cocks his brows and smirks easily, walking off to the other side of the car. Jeno feels like holding his hands over his chest to get his heart to cool down despite being mostly calm already. 

He stands off and brushes the dirt off his joggers. There’s none there. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jaemin is a forest fire, Jeno learns, bright and wild. It would be easy to compare himself to the roots getting tangled up beneath the forest floor, ready to spread the fire, but it wouldn’t be much use. 

The lake is relatively small and the beach is empty. When Jeno had told his parents about his plan to go swimming, by himself, they weren’t necessarily happy about it but had reluctantly let him go. Jaemin standing there in his bright red swim trunks, body lean and tan. 

“You have a tattoo?” Jeno asks and his voice seems oddly strangled in his own ears. 

“Yeah,” he says and gestures him to get closer. He couldn’t say no. Jaemin twists his body little to expose the black mark on his ribcage—Jeno could count the bones, build homes in the dents between them—a messy picture of a lighter. 

“It’s a stick and poke,” Jaemin says, getting him to glance at his face curiously.

“What’s that?” 

The smile Jaemin gives him is gentle. It, for some reason, hurts. 

“You dip a needle into ink and poke, poke, poke,” he says, “I made it myself.”

Jeno’s eyes widen.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he chuckles, “it’s kinda ugly. I like it.”

To find beauty in ugliness, that’s what Jeno is still trying to reach for. He can’t do that, not really, despite how hard he tries. In ugliness there’s rage, there’s violence but the quiet kind. Seeping in through the cracks, sneakily, slowly settling into his bones and becoming a part of him. 

This, of course, shouldn’t apply to something like a self-made tattoo, so Jeno just smiles.

“I think it’s cool.”

“Why, thank you!” Jaemin exclaims, and with that he takes off running towards the water. Something swoops in the bottom of Jeno’s stomach but he decides to shut off that part of his brain that wants to dive into it and races after him instead. 

It’s a warm evening and the water is chilly, a cooling embrace, hugging his body tightly as he runs in. Jaemin’s shrieks are loud. Alive. Vivid. Jeno is laughing, too. And he laughs until it hurts, playing around like children.

When he was younger, swimming had felt like drowning. 

It doesn’t feel like that anymore. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“Do you think they had good lives?” Jaemin asks. 

“Who?”

“Them,” he says and nods towards the frozen meats behind the glass door of the store freezer. 

Jeno is quiet for a moment, studying the red and white underneath the see through plastic. They don’t look like anything or anyone. Just lumps of disfigured meat. The more he looks at them, the less they appear like something that came from a thing that was once alive. The more he looks, the sicker he feels. 

“No,” he says blankly, “I don’t think so.”

“Me neither,” Jaemin says, tone somewhat thoughtful, arms crossed over his chest. He’s in a tank top and Jeno doesn’t quite get it how he isn’t freezing in the frozen foods section of the grocery store. He’s cold in his t-shirt.

“We’re quite lucky to be human,” he says after a second of silence. 

“We have God to thank for that,” Jeno replies before thinking about it. Jaemin hums in what sounds like agreement. 

“And evolution,” he says. 

“Yeah.”

And there’s wild horses hammering underneath his sternum, again, anxious to get out. Let us be free, they howl and scream. They morph into cows and cats. Jeno wants to escape his skin again. 

_I’m sorry,_ he wants to tell the frozen lumps of meat. _I’m sorry,_ he wants to say, _take me instead._

“It isn’t enough to get me to go vegan,” Jaemin jokes and he snorts in response. 

“But what is it if not murder,” Jeno wonders but it doesn’t sound like a real question. It’s sudden, out of place, awkward, but Jaemin seems to get it, somehow.

“Survival?” He guesses.

Jeno shrugs his shoulders and takes a step back. He doesn’t know why but it feels like all of this matters, somehow, somewhere, his body taking the information in, building up to something. 

“I guess we all end up like that,” he mutters.

“Geez, that’s so morbid,” Jaemin laughs and turns to look at him but his expression morphs from entertained to something like concerned very quickly. Jeno wants to rub his palms over his face and wipe off that look. 

“Does it scare you? Death?” He asks, then, and his voice is awfully soft it almost sickens him. They shouldn’t be talking about this in a supermarket. Jeno starts walking, Jaemin follows, and together they approach the yogurts and milk. He’s reminded of his mother and a little bang of guilt makes itself known. 

If Jeno was a little more impulsive, maybe he’d ask _why do you care? Do you really even like me as a person or am I just merely someone to pass the time with? There isn’t a world where we would compare._

But he isn’t that insecure and how Jeno would hate to feel like a charity case so he doesn’t bring any of this up and just chuckles dryly.

“I don’t know,” he finds himself saying, “a little. It shouldn’t. I should have faith. You?”

It’s a little surprising to catch himself being so frank. It’s not the whole thing, the nitty-gritty details left out. The ideas of Heaven and Hell, Dante’s Inferno and all. 

“Oh, fuck yeah,” Jaemin says like it’s obvious. Jeno glances at him. The blue in his fringe used to be more of a turquoise but now it’s faded, a dull shade. 

“Yeah?”

“It’s the uncertainty,” he explains, walking through the aisles, “or well, maybe not. Or it is that, too, definitely, but I just don’t wanna die, you know. I wanna live.”

This, somehow, feels like a knife slammed into his ribcage with no mercy. That, but make it relief. It shouldn’t feel like this, Jeno thinks. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It’s only when he’s home that he realizes why it matters. 

It’s stupid, foolish, silly, all the adjectives he can come up with, but he wants Jaemin to teach him to want to live. It feels nauseating to think about. It’s the whole thing with feeling like a charity case, lagging behind. 

The Jeno who is boring. The Jeno who is bland. The Jeno whom his parents love, whom God loves. The Jeno who smiles because it’s polite, the Jeno who shakes hands and doesn’t talk back. The Jeno who has never gotten drunk, the Jeno who’s eighteen and a virgin, the Jeno who likes what he shouldn’t like. 

The hopeless, the lost and the pathetic. 

It’s mostly foolish for there’s no way Jaemin could teach him that. He doesn’t know how to admit to himself either. He shouldn’t be unhappy. 

He still finds himself lost in dreams and incoherent when awake. It’s a tricky thing. He goes through the motions but finding joy in things is difficult, something he has to struggle after like holding onto a slipping thread. 

It’s easy to be around Jaemin. 

It’s also the hardest thing. Jeno isn’t stupid—he doesn’t want to depend on another person, _another entity,_ on his happiness. 

He is sitting in the kitchen table, his mother cooking the dinner while his father is somewhere—naturally, Jeno doesn’t know his actual whereabouts—that she brings it up. 

“I heard you’ve been seeing the new boy,” she says. He can’t see her face, her back turned towards him, and he’s grateful since his face flares up red. Jeno can feel his ears heat up, hands sweaty immediately. 

“What?” He stutters out. 

It’s not really that he thinks being around Jaemin is somehow inherently wrong but rather the overburdening shame of doing against his mother’s wishes. He bites on his tongue.

”A friend of mine saw you at the store with him,” she says, the tone of her voice neutral in that sense he just can’t figure out what it means. 

The feeling is stuck in his throat, making it had to breathe, a fire hot panic making its way through him. She isn’t even scolding him but he feels like a little boy being told off for breaking a family heirloom, snot and tears rolling down his face, bawling pathetically. But Jeno is just sitting there, palms against the cooling surface of the dinner table, shaking just the tiniest bit. 

He wants to deny it but he doesn’t know _how._

“It was only once,” he says, the words strange and wrong, “I just—we got to talking. It’s just that.”

Jeno stares down at the wooden surface, the imprints on it, and in his peripheral he can see his mother turn around. He isn’t brave enough to face her. She doesn’t believe him, he knows.

“Jeno,” she says, stern, “I have to say I’m disappointed. I told you not to associate with him.”

“But _why?_ ” It comes out before he can stop himself and the moment it’s there, floating in the air, he regrets it terribly. She sighs. 

“He’s trouble. It will look bad on your father if you hang around him.”

_What has he ever done to you? Why is it always about him, and never me?_

“But,” Jeno stutters, “he’s not a bad guy, ma.”

“I’m not saying he is a bad person, Jeno. I’m saying it just looks bad. You know we don’t judge anyone.”

It’s contradictory and it should be easy to debunk her words—but he just can’t do it. He pulls his hands into fists but still rests them against the table, and finally raises his head to face her. His ears red, heart hammering away, her face calm and disappointed, a heavy presence of a lithe woman. 

“Okay,” he just says and it sounds more brave than anything he has said in a while, pushing the chair back and standing up, “I’m not hungry. Sorry.”

He turns to leave the room but in the doorway his mother calls after him.

“You didn’t use to be like this,” she says, almost a little sad. 

And what could he possibly say to that? So he doesn’t say anything, just stops on his tracks for a brief second before exiting the room.

She isn’t wrong. It’s a strange thing.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jaemin’s mom is a divorcee and extremely similar to her son. Eccentric and chaotic in all the good ways. Jeno meets her only briefly in the living room before she’s out to run errands, or something of the like, leaving the house to them for a few hours. 

“Man, you’re too polite,” Jaemin sighs when she’s gone and they have made their way to his room, “I bet girls’ parents love you.”

They’ve never talked about girls—Jeno never has anything to say about the subject anyway so like always, he just shrugs his shoulders. 

“I was brought up like this,” he says.

“Yes, the pastor’s son and all,” Jaemin nods and it doesn’t sound even a bit judgemental. He almost wishes he would. 

Jaemin is sitting on his bed, on top of the covers, cross-legged, arms twisted unnaturally supporting his weight, palms pressing into the mattress. He looks so easy, boyish. Jeno wishes he could be more like him. The ageless charm of being free, being young, being flawed but in ways that aren’t inconvenient. 

This, of course, is a lie. Jaemin’s flaws are the most inconvenient. Getting kicked out of a school, getting into fights, spraypaint and curse words. They aren’t boring, is what he wants to say. But it’s a bad thing to say. 

“I didn’t get you a present,” Jeno says, pulling a chair from under a desk and sits down, “I just didn’t know what to get.”

Jaemin waves his hand as if to brush it off.

“Nah, it’s fine. Having someone around is enough,” he says, a smile on his lips. Jeno furrows his brows.

“Surely I’m not enough of a present for your eighteen.”

“I think I get to be the judge of that.”

It feels like the right thing not to argue against this. It’s his birthday, after all. This time it’s not a bad thing, keeping his mouth shut. The way it’s easier to exist around him, lighter, almost. The constant push and pull of it feeling right but knowing it should be wrong. 

Jeno knows about shame. To stand in the locker room back facing the other boys to contain himself, to stop his body from giving anyone any idea what his curiosity might push him to do. Just to get a quick look, a glimpse of another’s privates, how shameful but what a tempting thing, or to study the broader back of someone whose puberty hit quicker, better, more complimentary. 

The ripe age of eighteen, they both are now legally adults but what has changed since yesterday? Nothing. Jeno is still jetsam and Jaemin is a forest fire. 

His eyes twinkle and Jeno wants to pretend he doesn’t see that but it’s impossible to ignore. He’s already going against what he should be doing, disappointing his mother and with that, father. He wants to forget it. He wants to fall, sink, drown, slip through the cracks—to be with him, around him. 

Jeno wants to be more than this. 

“What do you wanna do?” He asks. 

Jaemin shrugs. 

“I gotta think about it,” he says. 

So Jeno lets him think. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Mid-August is as uncomfortably hot as the weeks and months before it. 

The mud against Jeno’s palms, getting underneath his fingernails, knees pressed into the dirt, the strands of wheat tickling his skin. The bright laugh of Jaemin’s, how it’s annihilating, making his heart go wild and anxious. 

“Have you ever kissed a man?” Jaemin asks suddenly, his elbow digging into the ground, palm against his cheek, laying there, on his side, looking both inviting and intimidatingly beautiful. The sun is shining down, making him appear holy.

It would be easy to say something rude, offensive, but it doesn’t feel right.

“No,” Jeno laughs, rolling onto his back. He has to close his eyes not to get blinded by the light. 

“A boy?”

“In kindergarten.”

“Really?” Jaemin exclaims. He chuckles and nods, mouth spread in a grin.

“My one and only.”

“Do your parents know?”

“Oh, no.”

Jaemin quiets down so Jeno opens his other eye to glance at him. He’s studying him with a curious expression, lashes dark, skin tan. 

“What?” He asks, laughing, wondering if this is what it feels like to be high or drunk. 

“Nothing,” Jaemin says quickly, appearing uncharacteristically shy, “or, maybe, yeah.”

“What?” Jeno repeats, lifting his hand on his forehead for shade so he can open his eyes properly. 

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” he says before he can process it, before he can strip the question down of its meaning into some sort of an insult or act of violence. 

Jaemin leans closer, then down, his upper body hovering over him. The rays of light blocked, only falling from his sides like rain, and he looks at him with eyes full of something Jeno couldn’t possibly understand. 

God, between them, cornered.

There isn’t, eventually, much glamour in it. Jaemin’s mouth finds his and it’s soft, shy and a little wet. Jeno’s hands, lost and confused, reach his shoulders, wrapping himself around him to pull him closer, carefully. 

Jaemin lays himself on top of him, the fabric of Jeno’s t-shirt riding up a bit, his hands cradling the side of his face. Hiding amidst the weeds in a field, unknowing and uncaring, for a moment letting the rest of the world slip away. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


And the day after. The Sunday bests. 

Jeno’s fingers interlaced, lips pressed against them, eyes closed. 

A familiar hymn. The light falling in through the windows again. The Lord’s hand that feeds and Jeno feeling like a pest, a leech, draining the blood out of something more important than him. The presence of his mother. Shame, but never, not for second, regret.

_I will not repent. If you still love me after all this, love me. I will not repent._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“I’m a virgin.”

“I figured as much.”

“Are you?”

“Depends what counts.”

“Anything.”

“Then no.”

“Alright.”

The embarrassment and incompetence, sitting on Jaemin’s bed in a t-shirt and shorts. School just a week away. By now his mother probably knows that he keeps coming around but he can’t be bothered anymore—he tries not to be. 

“You don’t gotta prove anything,” Jaemin says. He perks up his head in question.

“What?”

“Like, I’m glad you’re being honest,” he explains. Jeno blinks. 

“I wouldn’t lie about this,” he says.

“But you would lie about something?”

“Maybe,” Jeno says, “I don’t know.”

“Same,” Jaemin nods, putting his hand on his shoulder, palm big and warm. He leans against the wall, nudging Jeno to do so with him. 

They stay like that for a while, Jaemin’s arm wrapped around his shoulders, the side of Jeno’s face pressed against his neck. 

“Do you want to?” Jaemin asks. 

Jeno looks at him curiously, stretching his neck to do so. 

“You know,” he says vaguely, then boldly, “have sex. With me.” 

It would be easy to stutter and stammer but at first he’s lost with his words. It would be a filthy lie to argue that he hasn’t thought about it—but it’s intimidating. He wouldn’t know what to do, how to do it. Porn doesn’t teach you much. And yet he finds himself nodding shyly.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, voice strangled, “I don’t know—I don’t know how, you know.”

“It’s okay,” he says, “it’s kinda gross.”

It’s embarrassing to have Jaemin explain the mechanisms to him but he makes it silly, fun, and quick enough he’s being passed to the bathroom. Maybe it should be in the heat of the moment—that’s how it happens in the movies and shows—but without wanting it to get messy, it can’t be that.

Clothes being shed off, clumsy and excited, the shame being pushed aside, again, waiting in the sidelines. The hurried need to get under, over, inside, whatever, everything and to have it _now._ Damp skin and the quiet panting, the bedsheets sliding against his back, smelling like Jaemin, Jaemin, Jaemin. 

The desperate trajectory, the dull throb and Jeno’s fingernails pressing into the soft skin of Jaemin’s shoulders, his own mouth foreign, gasping out, _hold on, wait a minute,_ and then _just—_

_—move, please, Jaemin._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“I’m gay,” Jeno says. 

The boxes of cereal look back at him again. His mother is quiet. 

“Okay,” she says. 

Okay. Okay. 

“Cini Minis?” He asks.

“Put them in the cart.”

So he does.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


A plane flies over, seeming closer to them than it probably is. The bed of Jaemin’s pickup truck is uncomfortable even with a few blankets laid on it. 

“I told my mom I’m gay,” he says. Jaemin makes a surprised noise.

“You did? Shit, that’s great.” 

Jeno just hums in response, looking at the vast sky. There’s a few clouds there, white against the soft pink. 

“Did you tell her it’s me who you’re, you know, seeing?” Jaemin asks. The tone of his voice is unsure and wavering, and Jeno feels a little bad for it. He lifts his hand and rests it on his own chest, tracing the outline of the cross under his shirt. 

“No,” he admits, “but I will. I promise you.”

“You can—I mean, you should take your time,” Jaemin says. He tries to be understanding, Jeno knows. He has also learnt that it’s difficult for him sometimes. Stubborn, hot headed, but full of love. So he tries. 

“Are you nervous about school?” Jeno changes the subject. Jaemin turns on his side to look at him so he twists his head to face him, too. 

“A little bit,” he says, “but I’ll have you there, right?” 

“You will.”

“So it’s gonna be fine,” he says with a smile. It makes Jeno’s chest feel warm. He looks at his face, the tip of his nose, big mouth, his hair now completely blonde, the streak now gone. 

The summer has been complicated, difficult, cornering. It’s been easier to breathe the past few weeks, even when he isn’t around him. It’s like being knee-height in freezing water, adjusting slowly, with every shuddering intake of a breath. 

And what would the calm evening air think other than _I will let you live, I will let you live._ It’s Him, of course, indefinitely. Jeno wouldn’t say this aloud but it’s impossible not to believe in the existence of something greater when there’s a boy like Jaemin beside him. It’s quite that simple. 

Finding balances between war and peace, chaos and silence, the thin line he threads when falling for him in supermarkets, gas stations, lakes and fields, and everywhere between this and that. 

Jaemin’s knuckles nudge his side so he extends his hand, palm up. His fingers latch between his like they belong there. It’s an odd feeling of—the worst is already over. Or maybe it’s just begun because what could he know. He’s still just him. But he thinks it’s over. 

“It’s gonna be fine,” Jeno repeats softly. 

“As long as I don’t get expelled again,” he laughs.

“You won’t,” he says, “I’ll make sure of that.”

Jaemin looks at him with a smile that’s a little sad, strangely.

“You sure you’re able to do that?” He asks. 

Jeno doesn’t know what he means. Maybe there’s birds caged inside his chest too, fighting to be free, struggling to get a glimpse of light. 

“No,” Jeno answers truthfully, “but I’ll try.”

“Okay,” Jaemin accepts and he doesn’t look as sad anymore. There’s a sense that he’s missing something. 

He turns his face towards the sky. What else is there to say, or do? It isn’t peace in the absence of hurt but in spite of it. 

Jeno just doesn’t want it, anymore.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> tysm for reading! hope u liked. if u did, leave a comment and kudos!  
> im on twitter at[ morkhyuck](http://twitter.com/morkhyuck)


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